Brian Singer - Interview

.aesthetic talk
Brian Singer
Uncomfortable Realities

written Jonathan Bergstróm

Best known for his thought-provoking work, Brian Singer, also known as Someguy, is a multimedia artist who challenges conventional perceptions of objects and cultural symbols. Singer’s work often delves into the complexities of human connection, communication, and societal dynamics.

Some of his more highlighted work, like The 1000 Journals Project and the TWIT Spotting (Texting While In Traffic), catapulted Singer into the limelight. The 1000 Journals Project was an experiment that involved sending 1000 blank journals into the world so people could find them, contribute to them, and then pass them along. The project not only garnered widespread attention, including an exhibition at SFMOMA, but also demonstrated Singer's passion for encouraging people to engage with art firsthand

Singer’s preference for public, unexpected art installations, such as addressing homelessness in San Francisco, reaches audiences beyond traditional gallery settings in the hopes of fostering action on any number of the societal issues under examination in his work.

In his upcoming exhibition, Everything you say can and will be used against you, Singer deconstructs and reassembles recognizable and culturally-charged objects, unveiling fresh perspectives that confront, address, and reframe some of the most pressing social challenges of our era. The exhibition is on view at the Torrance Art Museum in California from January 20 through March 2, 2024.

In this interview, we chat with Singer about his creative process, the inspiration behind his latest exhibition, and the role of art in shaping societal narratives.

BRIAN SINGER
The 1000 Journals Project

“Growing up, whenever I complained about something, my mother would respond with, “No one ever said life was fair,” which fed this voice in my head that replied, “Well, it should be.” So when people get screwed over or politicians lie for their own gain, it doesn’t sit well. ”

Jonathan Bergstróm
I know that growing up with your mother who was interned during WWII is something that informs your awareness of injustice. Are there any other significant moments or events in particular that sparked your interest in politics and social justice?
Brian Singer
I don’t think there was any single moment or series of events for me. Instead, it happened more cumulatively throughout my life. Growing up, whenever I complained about something, my mother would respond with, “No one ever said life was fair,” which fed this voice in my head that replied, “Well, it should be.” So when people get screwed over or politicians lie for their own gain, it doesn’t sit well. Unfortunately, given the frequency of injustice in this country (and beyond), it’s easy to get overwhelmed and tune everything out. I have to pick and choose which topics I create work about and when because the injustices are literally never-ending.

You’re an artist, a writer and also a successful graphic designer. On a creative level, how has it been switching between those different roles?
Well, I’m not sure I’d call myself a writer (that might be an insult to actual writers). But I use language and wordplay, and I think there’s a strong visual connection between my design practice and artistic pursuits. However, there’s definitely a mental switch when designing something for a company versus making art. With the former, there’s a business objective, a brand voice to speak in, and too many cooks in the kitchen. When I’m creating art, it’s more about the purity of the concept, and at least all the cooks are inside my head. But except for writing (which I find the most difficult of the three, as I’m scrutinizing my responses here), I feel like I move seamlessly between being an artist and designer; it just boils down to what I’m trying to communicate and to whom.

You have an upcoming exhibition, titled Everything you say can and will be used against you, at the Torrance Art Museum from January 20, 2024 - March 2, 2024. Can you tell us more about the thesis behind this show?
The works in this show are really about our behavior as a country. We seem to have this idealistic notion of what America is: home of the free, amber waves of grain, and so forth. But we’re afraid of, or perhaps unwilling to, be honest about how we treat each other and the society we’ve created. So, most of the work in the show tries to shed some light on these uncomfortable realities.
For example, in the piece Progress, I use window glass collected off the street from car break-ins and place it into crystal champagne flutes. This combination is intended to highlight the continually growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. How do the rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer? A better question is, why do we keep allowing it?

The exhibition’s title is derived from the Miranda rights and explores the ideas of privacy and the rise in mob justice. The way we tear each other down, all the time, over everything, seemed like an excellent thematic umbrella under which the other works fit.

BRIAN SINGER
Atelier

This is your fifth solo exhibition. Has the way you display your art changed over the years? How so?
It really depends on the concept and space available. While I love having work in a museum or gallery setting with big white walls and plenty of breathing room to take in the art, it can also be limiting. Partially because how often do I get a museum show? But also because the people who visit these spaces aren’t always the people I’d like to reach.

In San Francisco, the city put up a bunch of metal barricades in places to discourage the unhoused from sleeping there. This basically just moves them a block over, hiding the issue rather than solving it. In response, I purchased sleeping bags with a camouflage pattern and draped them over the barricades in locations throughout the city. On the sleeping bags, I painted the words “Home Street Home” to look like cross stitching and left a note that if you needed a sleeping bag, to take this one, it’s for you. So I’m a big fan of art that takes place in public in unexpected ways and even begs the question, is it art?

This exhibition also features some of the work from your flag series, where you disassemble flags and weave them onto different objects. What made you decide to use flags as a symbol?
Flags are complex objects in that they mean many different things to many different people. This brings a wonderful variety of perspectives and meanings into each piece, as each viewer has their own relationship with the flag. They’re also a simple graphic representation of a complicated thing: an entire country. So, the history, people, reputation, and ideals are all rolled up into this symbol.
Deconstructing these flags thread by thread and tying them back together again helps illustrate some of the complexity embedded in these objects (and our society). In my opinion, the individual threads form a more accurate representation of a country, all mixed together and barely recognizable.

“I do believe [art] is [helping], and we’d be much worse off right now if we hadn’t had artists of all kinds shaping our culture. But it’s hard to look towards the future and believe we’re on the right path.”

Reading interviews with you and seeing some of your previous projects, it seems that you enjoy bringing creativity out of others. What is it about inspiring others to express themselves that excites you?
There’s a wonderful book called Orbiting the Giant Hairball by the late, great, Gordon MacKenzie (he was a creative director at Hallmark). The book is about navigating a corporate environment as a creative, and I’m going to paraphrase this (apologies if I butcher it), but he questions what happens to us growing up that we lose our creativity. If you ask a room of kindergarteners how many of them are artists, every single child will raise their hands. If you ask the same of sixth graders, maybe half will raise their hands. Ask high school seniors, and you might get one or two. It’s like our creativity is crushed as we grow up by a fear of judgment and the need to fit in. I bring this up because I struggle with it, so if I can inspire others, maybe I could help make things just a tiny bit better. My first book, The 1000 Journals Project, was dedicated “to everyone who’s ever said ‘I’m not creative.’”

You’re based in San Francisco. How would you describe the city’s art scene at this current moment?
Earlier today, I was in Oakland for a friend’s artist talk and then went to a few galleries. Despite the rain, people were out in droves. Then, this evening, I went to Minnesota Street Project for the kickoff of Artweek, and, again, there were big crowds (honestly, too many people for my taste). So, despite all the doom and gloom articles, I think the art scene has been quite energized coming out of the pandemic. There’s a really strong community in the Bay Area, with several top-notch non-profits and institutions dedicated to supporting various groups of artists. Now, is anyone buying anything? Hard to say. The scene is vibrant, but I’m not sure if anyone is making a living at it.

SF is a city that was heavily affected by the societal changes during the pandemic, such as the switch to remote work and the long shutdowns. Has the city’s changes affected the art scene or how your work responds to such changes?
There’s definitely been an impact throughout the Bay Area, and, I’m not gonna lie, some of it is pretty disheartening. Things are particularly bad for the unhoused and those in need of addiction or mental health support. For artists, I see two things happening. First, many folks have been priced out and moved to more affordable areas. At the same time, I see renewed energy and ingenuity in responding to the changes. In some vacant storefronts, artists have partnered with the owners and activated the space for art, performance, and community events. Artists are like weeds; we find a way.

BRIAN SINGER
Deconstruction #3
wood lath, US/Mexico flags
acrylic, 24 x 51 inches

BRIAN SINGER
Installation view
Everything you say can and will be used against you
Torrance Art Museum

You've left a lasting impression with your art on more than one occasion. Both the 1000 Journal Project and the TWIT (Texting While In Traffic) gained national attention and were featured in news outlets like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Do you have a method coming up with ideas that captivates the audience's attention?
I wish I had a method (that way, I could come up with more!). I do spend a lot of time noodling ideas and concepts (I’m far from spontaneous in that way). The 1000 Journals Project had been rolling around in my head for five years before the idea finally clicked (it was based on photographs I’d taken of what people write on bathroom walls and a fascination with these public/private conversations). I’ve had plenty of ideas that have flopped (more failures than successes, for sure). So perhaps my method, if I have one, is persistence. I keep trying. Or maybe that’s just me being stubborn, I don’t know.

A lot has happened within the political and social climate over the last couple of years. The pandemic, the wars in both Ukraine and Palestine, and this year’s upcoming election in the US to name a few. What role do you hope art will play in the future, given the landscape of today?
I have high hopes, I have dreams, I want art to help make the world a better place. Then, another voice in my head reminds me that art has been working hard for decades (and longer), yet here we are. So, is it helping?

I do believe it is, and we’d be much worse off right now if we hadn’t had artists of all kinds shaping our culture. But it’s hard to look towards the future and believe we’re on the right path. I hope we can correct our course, but with people so entrenched in their views and facts being undermined by powerful agendas, I’m more than a bit worried. Plus, it’s an election year. I will keep fighting a good fight, but sometimes I feel like I brought a butter knife to the zombie apocalypse.

Tschabalala Self - Interview

.aesthetic talk
Tschabalala Self
Self Talk

written Hannah Rose Prendergast

Existing on canvas, through sculpture, functional art objects, and live performance pieces, Tschabalala Self’s work is a “testament to black beauty and power.”

Inspired by her birthplace of Harlem, Self’s eclectic painting and printmaking practice sews in well-rounded figures that feel at home. In homage to her mother, the artist’s female forms show skin rendered in repurposed fabric. Don’t take it politically; they’re just living their life grounded by a strong sense of self.

portrait TSCHABALALA SELF
seen CHRISTIAN DEFONTE

“I represent black women to allow them to take up space in the collective consciousness. My figures exist for their own desire, pleasure, and contentment, not for viewer edification.”

Hannah Rose Prendergast
How would you like your work to be perceived?
Tschabalala Self
My work is derived from my own lived experience because that is what I know best. I am always working to represent black women in a way that allows them to take up space, both physically and psychologically, within the collective consciousness. My figures are not there for the edification of the viewer. The idea of self-possession is fundamental in this concept and my practice. I just want to create a world where my figures exist for themselves — their own desire, pleasure, and contentment.

In a spiritual sense, what happens to the fabric in your paintings over time? Do you ever wash it?
The fabric in the paintings will remain, provided the paintings are kept and maintained appropriately. My studio is home to many scraps, fabrics, and textile pieces that have been sewn, cut, sewn, and cut again. Some of the fabric is painted canvas or old paintings, stripped from stretcher bars, and cannibalized to make new works. I believe each scrap is embedded with the energy of its own past experiences and origins.

What’s your process when it comes to titling shows?
Before titling my shows, I like to have at least the first work for the exhibition completed. The first work for a show generally sets the tone and helps me clarify my initial thoughts. I like to find a word or a term that feels both familiar and distant – something that can instantly spark an emotion but not a clear thought.

What does Seated (2022) mean to you after being restored by the community of Bexhill? Did you see the sculpture in a new light during this experience?
Of course, I was very disheartened when I found out about the vandalism, but I soon realized there was potential in using this violent act to restore the figure and unite the community around her. Many have derived joy from Seated, and with the help and support of the community, she was restored to her former likeness. I felt terribly for individuals in Bexhill-on-Sea for whom the vandalism shocked and frightened. Hopefully, the community engagement and their collective efforts to restore the artwork provided some much-needed healing — I believe it did. It is amazing that so many restorative hands have now touched the work.

TSCHABALALA SELF
Louis Vuitton Arty Capucines x Tschabalala Self, 2019
©Studio Lenthal

If you had to bring your painting ethos to a career in plastic surgery, how would you reconcile the two?
Plastic surgery is my career in an alternate universe. I love beauty, beautification, and balance, so if I had pursued such a career, I think I would have enjoyed it quite a lot. Also, my practice consists of a lot of cutting and rearranging — rearranging things and ideas is my great skill. I'm not sure if my painting aesthetic would translate too well into a plastic surgery career, but my ethos would integrate into one very smoothly.

How has your body image changed since you started painting these women?
My body image has changed mainly by nature of age, and in many ways, I have grown up while making my work. I started my current body of work when I was 23, and now, ten years later, I have gone through many physical, mental, and metaphysical changes.

“The vandalism of 'Seated' was disheartening, but its restoration by the community united and healed us. It’s amazing how many hands have now touched and transformed the work.”

In 2019, you collaborated with Louis Vuitton for their Artycapucines Collection, and last spring, Hermès unveiled your window display at their Madison Avenue location. What do you love about working with luxury brands?
I love the mutability of fashion houses. I appreciate how their identities can expand and contract without compromising the core culture of their brands. I admire and emulate this flexibility within my own practice.

Sounding Board (2021) was your first venture into live performance art. If you were to produce a feature film, what would that look like?
One of my dream projects would be to make a movie. What would that look like? Hopefully a blockbuster!

portrait TSCHABALALA SELF
seen CHRISTIAN DEFONTE

Installation view, Tschabalala Self, Spaces and Places
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Maag Areal, 2023
©Courtesy the artist + Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / Vienna
seen STEFAN ALTENBURGER, Zurich

What’s something your mother always told you?
My mother was very wise and very emotionally intelligent. She would always talk to me and tell me so many things. Many of the thoughts I believe to be my own, I am sure, are actually from my mother. More than anything, my mother convinced me from a very young age that I was strong enough and bright enough to pursue what I wanted out of life. That was one of the many gifts and strengths that my mother gave me; she told me in so many ways to believe in myself.

What’s next for you, Tschabalala?
Next for me is more travel, work, and hopefully, some time off – time to spend with family, friends, and loved ones. More shows, more art, and hopefully more beauty in my life.

Patricia Carr Morgan - Interview

.aesthetic talk
Patricia Carr Morgan
I Love You Don’t Leave Me

written Colter Ruland

After decades exploring memory and mortality, Patricia Carr Morgan looks towards the planet’s disappearing glaciers.

When Patricia Carr Morgan was 15 years old, she walked home from school one day and happened to notice a familiar print of flowered fabric hanging from the mulberry tree nearby.

This was in West Plains, MO. One can imagine what she saw, the fabric caught in the tree’s branches, fluttering nervously, the print’s flowers against the tree’s leaves forming a new species. The fabric, she realized, was from an article of her clothing. When she looked over at where the house should be, it was no longer there. A gas leak had filled the basement, ignited, and destroyed the house. The explosion had sent any contents that weren’t obliterated outright onto the yard and surrounding area, creating a new sphere of influence that would ripple throughout her life.

portrait Patricia Carr Morgan

“It destroyed everything,” Morgan recalls, “including all memorabilia.” Since then, her artistic practice throughout the decades has been about collecting and examining the remains of things that have been or are on the verge of being lost.
Morgan studied art history and eventually started creating conceptual art installations that exhibited in the United States and abroad. She went on to receive her MFA in interdisciplinary art from the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ, where she lives today.

“It isn’t surprising that death and memory are threaded throughout my work,” she says. “My father designed and made significant, monumental tombstones. Whenever I was at his business, I would play among the enormous slabs of granite waiting to be cut and carved, not understanding the depth of what they represented.”
The materials that would make up the majority of her art installations in the late 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, would be other people’s memorabilia, often found at estate sales. A number of these installations during this time are preoccupied with structures reminiscent of houses and tombs. In the video documentation of these exhibitions, Morgan describes what we are seeing and how she arrived at her concepts as if archiving customs and objects from a vaguely familiar yet disappeared world.
Tombs, hearths, and chimneys made of Plexiglas and neon, a burnt orange cube made with baby bottle nipples, a pitch black cube made from plate glass and asphalt—these kinds of structures housed objects Morgan gathered herself and invited viewers to leave behind. In Enclosure XVIII, a trapezoidal structure inspired by a visit to King Tutankhamun’s tomb, we find a gilded rib cage, rich soil, a dried lizard, and a corsage. In Dinner at Plexi’s, we find delicate china plates on which the dessicated remains of a dinner and dried flowers remain untouched. In Village One, we find pinned butterflies and nestled eggs. In Endocardial Vocabulary, we find a fax machine that continuously operates beside specimen jars filled with objects like a Bible, a children’s doll, and an animal skull. The list can go on and on, a catalog of once personal items turned into facsimiles of existence.

“It would be an honest answer to say I don’t know why I need to make art but I do know my art is a form of communication for me,” says Morgan. “It’s not a private diary of thoughts but of things I believe we all share, sometimes forget, and become unaware.” These existences, all stemming from personal though separated experiences, reach out and affect each of us. “I have always been aware that my concepts are universal,” she continues, “but it was during the process or sometime later that I realized how personal they were. Everyone has experienced a loss, has or has had a love, and is surviving.”

Nowhere would that universality of loss and survival be more apparent than in her current project, I love you don’t leave me, which applies her approach onto a massive scale as she attempts to personalize the impact of climate change.

Morgan remembers the first time she experienced the importance of glaciers on our planet at Yosemite National Park, where, millions of years ago, glaciers had carved the valleys Morgan found herself in. “My first memory of feeling at peace was in Yosemite,” she recalls. “Alone at the base of the Half Dome, I thought of the glacial power that had carved through the stone to create the spot where I sat, and my infinitesimal presence in the earth’s long journey was comforting.”
When she arrived in Antarctica, Morgan experienced a similar infinitesimal presence. “When I saw the majestic vastness of Antarctica’s white beauty,” she says, “the enticement of its many blues and greens revealed in the cracks and broken edges—I was overwhelmed. I fell in love, and it was slowly leaving.”

There’s an incredible amount of sadness attached to the way Morgan speaks about these glaciers, as if they’re long lost friends. This personal attachment is perhaps the strongest conceptual element of I love you don’t leave me and is something that has been surprisingly missing from much of the public discourse surrounding climate change and its impact on the environment. All of the calamitous data, projections, and perspectives about the state of the planet are too easily abstracted. Morgan imbues all this loss with personal meaning. We are indebted to these glacial landscapes and we should treat them as friends, she seems to suggest. Even her more straightforward photography of glaciers and icebergs, which forms the foundation of her multifaceted experimentations, are often of icebergs isolated in the water or the precarious point where the water meets the ice—while they are inherently beautiful, there is a profound sense of gorgeous loneliness that is inescapable.

Morgan later traveled to Greenland to take more photographs, returning to her studio in Tucson to search for “a way to express my concerns.” There, in the desert where water takes on new meaning, she has been experimenting with various iterations of her archive of images that manifest as multiple series in I love you don’t leave me. “I experimented a lot,” she says. “It was logical to think about how the polar regions were being destroyed, so I did a series expressing the degradation of that environment using coal and carbon. I continued to experiment, saving the bits and pieces that I liked. Eventually, I found the materials that became Blue Tears and expressed the beauty and majesty of the glaciers.”

Blue Tears is a conceptual art installation that first exhibited at the Tucson Museum of Art and is currently being planned to tour the country. The installation consists of sheets of silk organza, each around 17 feet long, onto which Morgan has printed her images of glaciers, icebergs, and wildlife. They hang suspended, their cold blue translucence conveying the fragility of the landscapes they represent. As part of the exhibition at the museum, Morgan released these layers over time, letting them gently, silently fall to the floor to create an “undulating ocean of silken glaciers.” The exhibition reportedly brought some to tears.

Patricia Carr Morgan
Altered States Greenland
carbon-based pigments and coal particles
from Altered States

One might think of her destroyed childhood house in a moment such as this and the “generations of mementos” strewn across the yard. These disappearing glaciers contain their own memories, they form their own record of the world throughout time in their ice cores, and as they melt such experiences are likewise lost forever. The possibility of life, and its implication of total collapse, is perhaps Morgan’s foremost concern in her entire body of work, now expanded on a grand scale in I love you don’t leave me.

Perhaps Morgan is expanding her universe, from the personal reconstructions of her earlier installations to the vastness of the polar regions. Or maybe she is simply asking us to consider things that seem larger than us as personal, too. Grandeur can be personal. We all pick from its fruit. Morgan is asking us to consider whether the tree can continue to bear it, bear us, and our indifference.

Some of her experimental series make the result of that indifference more overt, whether it is inflicting pristine images of white and blue glaciers with carbon-based pigments and coal particles or repeatedly using digital and analog processes to make landscapes fade, discolor, and become ghostly abstractions of their former selves.

“Trying to imagine it was fruitless. Was the future of Antarctica a seascape? What will happen to the beauty of the region? I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t predict it, so I sought to express its certain change, as well as our uncertainty. I introduced chance. Relinquishing control of my process and printing resulted in varying degrees of abstraction, conveying the melting, the changes, and the unknown.”

Morgan plans on returning to Greenland in August of 2022, and to Antarctica in February of 2023. “I’m looking forward to going back,” she says, “not only to take more photographs but to see the glaciers again. I expect it will be somewhat like going to a beach where we know the tides and currents have changed things, but it doesn’t look that different. Unless a glacier has receded beyond its anchoring point at the edge of the land, it will probably look similar to when I was there last.”

While Morgan’s body of work can be understood as an elegy for what has been lost, it is also about reconstructing that loss, of reframing our appreciation of beauty even when it is disappearing. Even if our existence should disappear altogether, one hopes someone as astute as Morgan will one day in the future collect the remains of our own experiences and likewise treat them with care.

Patricia Carr Morgan
Greenland, 2015-2016
from Ice Greenland, Antarctica